Report: NVIDIA Buying Arm “By the End of the Summer”

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



According to the Evening Standard’s latest exclusive, NVIDIA will be buying Arm by the end of the summer. Sources claim that green team has entered “exclusive talks” with the British semiconductor and software design company, which implies that acquisition offers with other contestants have fallen through.



Actually, that’s exactly what the Evening Standard claims. “In April, Goldman approached Apple, which decided against buying the business,” the publication wrote. “The bank then tried to put together a consortium including, Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia who would all take stakes in Arm, the Evening Standard understands.”



“But California based Nvidia has emerged as the sole interested buyer.”



Arm is reportedly worth $44 billion, so NVIDIA will be paying dearly in the event...

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[Zarathustra]

The consortium would have been the best outcome.

Nvidia as a sole owner would be an absolute disaster.

I'm surprised we haven't seen any defensive bids by other players. Samsung/Qualcomm/Apple/etc.

 

[Uvilla]

I guess everyone who has a license now will have a license forever minus whatever Nvidia develops from now on?
Surprised at Apple.. this would not be a mayor hit for them.
Doom, gloom, bye ARM as a standard of sorts... We are going to have the Qualcomm Arm, the Nvidia Arm the Apple Arm, the Huawei Arm... All with significant differences and special extra instructions... Compatible only perhaps in legacy mode... Or some such.

 

[Nanobot]

I suspect the disinterest in defensive bids is due to anti-trust concerns. ARM licenses to just about everyone which will be the major hurdle Nvidia has to jump in order for regulators to approve this move. But yeah, this is bad for everyone.

 

[Uvilla]

I suspect the disinterest in defensive bids is due to anti-trust concerns. ARM licenses to just about everyone which will be the major hurdle Nvidia has to jump in order for regulators to approve this move. But yeah, this is bad for everyone.

Antitrust concern? Nah, if that is so those lawyers are misguiding those companies. Only one being smart is Nvidia. Everybody else is being short sighted. Shockingly short-sighted.

 

[Brian_B]

I dunno. Not sure how this would affect licensing agreements currently in place.

Apple may not care because they have already licensed what they need and plan to diverge in their own direction moving forward. Samsung likely could do the same thing.

Qualcomm is the one I would worry about. They don't have nearly the same resources that the others do, or as much muscle to throw around if nVidia didn't want to play ball.

I still give the odds of nV pulling this off extremely low. nV doesn't have nearly enough in the bank, and as well as this may pay off, it's a big chunk to bite off and could very well sink them in the process of leveraging out to be able to snag it. It's like AOL buying Time Warner... they snagged a huge fish and it pulled the entire ship down.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

AOL? That's something I haven't heard in a while.

 

[rat]

Whelp. I guess we'll be seeing MIPS based phones in soon enough time... I honestly don't know how nVidia can't **** it up for everyone else.